Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
8 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Nearest I can get is a Turkic language?
Definitely Turkic. I hear a Russian-sounding /je/ come up a few times, which suggests one of the former Soviet republics. If Wikipedia is to believed, the presence of /q/ (k, but from the back of mouth) rules out Standard Azerbaijani – but that’s not to say that it doesn’t occur in some of the regional variants. Uzbek was my second guess, but that (according to the omniscient W) lacks the vowel /y/ (ü) – which is very frequent in this clip. These features are steering me towards Turkmen.
One of the eastern ones, judging from the uvular [q] and the uvular fricative equivalent of Turkish ‘ğ’. Otherwise it sounds similar enough to Turkish itself I imagine it’s from the same subfamily.
It seems to be so close to Turkish that it could be Gagauz.
It’s Kyrgyz (Kirghiz) I think. There’s so many labials.
Kazakh maybe. But as others have said, it’s definitely Turkic.
In Simon A’s own page on Gagauz, he says, “В, Г, К & Л are palatalized / palatal before ä, е, и, ö and ÿ” – i.e. similar rules to Russian. The first word in the excerpt sounds like “Tiveria” (= Tiberias?), where we hear palatalisation of the /v/. Simon does not specifically mention this feature on his pages on Turkmen, Kyrgyz or Kazakh (although Turkmen and Kyrgyz do both have [je] as a possible realization of letter E.). Palatalized /v/ before /e/ is heard again at 0.06. This is making me lean towards Daydreamer’s suggestion of Gagauz (although, I admit, I had not heard of the language before).
Another possibility I had thought of was Tatar, but that language, it seems, is characterised by a distinct lack of palatalization; its native speakers often lack palatalization when speaking Russian (the ‘Tatar accent’ – see Wikipedia entry).
The answer is Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz tili / Кыргыз тили / قىرعىز تىلى), a Turkic language spoken mainly in Kyrghyzstan.
Nearest I can get is a Turkic language?
Definitely Turkic. I hear a Russian-sounding /je/ come up a few times, which suggests one of the former Soviet republics. If Wikipedia is to believed, the presence of /q/ (k, but from the back of mouth) rules out Standard Azerbaijani – but that’s not to say that it doesn’t occur in some of the regional variants. Uzbek was my second guess, but that (according to the omniscient W) lacks the vowel /y/ (ü) – which is very frequent in this clip. These features are steering me towards Turkmen.
One of the eastern ones, judging from the uvular [q] and the uvular fricative equivalent of Turkish ‘ğ’. Otherwise it sounds similar enough to Turkish itself I imagine it’s from the same subfamily.
It seems to be so close to Turkish that it could be Gagauz.
It’s Kyrgyz (Kirghiz) I think. There’s so many labials.
Kazakh maybe. But as others have said, it’s definitely Turkic.
In Simon A’s own page on Gagauz, he says, “В, Г, К & Л are palatalized / palatal before ä, е, и, ö and ÿ” – i.e. similar rules to Russian. The first word in the excerpt sounds like “Tiveria” (= Tiberias?), where we hear palatalisation of the /v/. Simon does not specifically mention this feature on his pages on Turkmen, Kyrgyz or Kazakh (although Turkmen and Kyrgyz do both have [je] as a possible realization of letter E.). Palatalized /v/ before /e/ is heard again at 0.06. This is making me lean towards Daydreamer’s suggestion of Gagauz (although, I admit, I had not heard of the language before).
Another possibility I had thought of was Tatar, but that language, it seems, is characterised by a distinct lack of palatalization; its native speakers often lack palatalization when speaking Russian (the ‘Tatar accent’ – see Wikipedia entry).
The answer is Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz tili / Кыргыз тили / قىرعىز تىلى), a Turkic language spoken mainly in Kyrghyzstan.
The recording comes from the GRN.